A large number of designs are known for mass flow meters for flowing media that work on the Coriolis Principle. The number of proposals for making the Coriolis line run optimally is almost impossible to review. For the flowing medium to bring about the desired Coriolis effect in the Coriolis line, the Coriolis line must be in oscillation. An oscillator, or frequently several oscillators, is generally used for this purpose. In conventional flow meters, the mass flow of the flowing medium through the Coriolis line is determined by quantitative analysis of the Coriolis force acting on the oscillating Coriolis line. Since the Coriolis forces that occur are generally very small, conventional flow meters are particularly sensitive to the output and input of mechanical energy between the mass flow meter and its environment. In the past, the mechanical coupling between the flow meter and the pipelines connected to the flow meter received a lot of attention, and a great many suggestions have been made for solutions that attempt to reduce this mechanical coupling.
The coupling between the Coriolis line and the housing holding generally the Coriolis line, the oscillator or oscillators and the transducer or transducers that senses the motion of the Coriolis line has already been the subject of improvements as well. The common approach to this is to guarantee very strong decoupling between the Coriolis line and the housing by making the inherent frequency of the housing as different as possible from the oscillation frequency of the Coriolis line. To do so, the housing is generally designed to be very rigid to oscillation.
In the past, no attention was paid to the problem of the mechanical coupling between the Coriolis line and the housing, on one hand, and the flow meter's various attachments to the housing, on the other.
Frequently, a basic device, i.e., a unit consisting of the Coriolis line, an oscillator, a transducer and a housing, is used as the basis for a large number of mass flow meters for different purposes. Depending on the purpose for which the flow meter is used, various attachments are connected to the flow meter, respectively to its housing. Because these attachments are connected to the housing in a way that is generally undefined, mechanical couplings are created in systems capable of oscillation that can have a major influence on the measurement precision of the flow meter. These unwanted influences frequently cannot be prevented by the corresponding layout of the attachments, since the mechanical coupling is frequently also influenced by the specific on-site installation situation, whose design understandably cannot be considered. As a result, on the known flow meters, the influences determining the oscillation properties of the device cannot be determined in advance by a corresponding design, so that the measurement precision of the mass flow meter is already affected by inadequate definition of the whole mass flow meter as a system capable of oscillation.
The object of the invention is thus based on improving the known mass flow meters for flowing media that work on the Coriolis Principle in such a way that the technical oscillation properties of the whole device remain basically constant regardless of the different attachments, so that high measurement precision is guaranteed.